Hi family! Hope you aren't getting antsy for this weekend's post. I'm afraid I neglected to blog promptly. This past Friday was the PNNL/Battelle Salmon Bake (I thought the color was a nice touch). $5 for salmon and the chance to play on the big inflatable kids' stuff. There are some pictures of me losing the bungee race in the slide show. After the salmon bake, we went down to the uptown (it's really just a tacky shopping center) and watched the Cool Desert Nights car show. Anyone who thinks their car is remotely cool or classic enters the show and they drive in circles before they finally park in the big parking lot and we can look a little closer at them. Plenty of car pictures on my camera of course. There was a greeen VW bug with a clemson sticker on it. We hunted them down and talked to them. Very nice people.

Saturday was floating day. We had two inflatable kayaks, one canoe, two inner tubes, three tubing tubes, and a small "two person" raft that had oars. We tied the tubes to the canoe and my kayak, then we divided up the few paddles and made sure everyone had a life jacket. We put a cooler in two of the boats and put drinks in a bookbag that was tied to one of the inner tubes (the water was cold enough to keep things cold). We hopped in our "boats" and floated from the south side of PNNL to the other end of Richland (on the Columbia River). It took about 2/2.5 hours. After that, there was some volleyball played and napping done. We played Wii on Saturday night, which was quite fun, because the TV was absolutely massive.

Sunday was hiking day. We hiked Badger mountain near here (800 ft elevation gain, 1.4 miles each way). Very different from any hike I've ever done. NO TREES on the mountain. You can see some pictures of that in the slide show. You'll notice a picture from the top, where you can see the Columbia River. There is a region that has a lot of trees. That's Richland. The empty space to the left and back (north, along the river) is the Hanford Site. You can faintly see the reactors there. You can tell from that elevation that Richland's trees don't belong there. There is such an odd variety of trees here. They were brought in when the city was originally formed by the government (like I said before, the Oak Ridge of Washington for you Tennessee folks). I'm going on a bus tour of the Hanford Site tomorrow afternoon. Sadly, Reactor B (as in, the second one built...the one for plutonium production) is getting a new roof, so we are not going to be able to go inside and see the water pools and stuff. No pictures to come of that, but there will be plenty of pictures of the trip I'll be taking this weekend to Mt. Rainier. Yay camping! With no sleeping bags!

Yay for things that go fast!

So, I have been pestered incessantly for pictures from this weekend. You guys are going to have to put up with pictures from Thursday and Friday as well, because I put them all in the one slide show.
See, we went to the hydroplane boat races on Saturday. They were pretty stinking cool, so there are 165 pictures from the day. Needless to say, I pared it down a bit.
In this weekend's album, you will see pictures of us playing on the local elementary school playground (look closely! you can see the 11 year old boys on bikes who were trying to pick a fight with us!). We went over there on Thursday to hang out with Carissa and Laura. Yes, there is another Laura. There are some sunny pictures of fellow interns at the picnic we had on Friday evening. Very fun to hang out with everyone outside of the lab. The ones in the pictures are all interns from the building where Ben and I work. Last but certainly not least, there are hydroplane pictures. Enjoy!

Palouse Falls

The state of Washington has no appreciation for its own natural beauty. The state park website here is atrocious. It doesn't even have pictures of the part of the park that you would want to see. For example, I give you Palouse Falls SP. It is a waterfall. No pictures of waterfalls on their website. Luckily for you all, I have taken plenty of pictures of it today. It was incredible. We drive through this rolling countryside. Lots of farmland. All of a sudden, there's this canyon and a waterfall. The falls are 185 feet high, making the canyon at least 400 feet deep. Some of the pictures have people in them to give you an idea of the scale. This park was so unlike South Carolina. There, someone would have fallen to their death by now, so there'd be handrails everywhere and you wouldn't be able to actually wander around. Here, there weren't even official trails. There was a fence at one spot, but it was pretty much open for wherever we wanted to wander, right up to the edge. Which is kinda scary if you're afeared of heights (well, just unsafe heights. if there's a railing, i'll walk right up to it). But it was very cool and totally worth walking up to the edge. We also went to Walla Walla, so there are pictures of that too.



For those who want a laugh, I've included this slide show of the local disc golf course. It's like wandering across Wyoming or something. Very strange.